Acute otitis media (AOM), which is one of the most common ailments in children, can be classified as an infectious inflammation in the middle ear that typically starts abruptly with significant pain, is of relatively short duration and can be clinically verified. Unfortunately, antibiotics, which are regularly recommended for the treatment of AOM, may not provide an optimum therapy for children suffering from AOM because spontaneous healing is frequent and regular antibiotic use may lead to widespread microbial resistance.
Myringotomy, which is a surgical procedure that involves the creation of a tiny incision in the eardrum to relieve pressure caused by an excessive build-up of fluid, is the most accurate technique for verifying the presence of AOM because it enables direct contact with any bacterial infection underneath the eardrum (i.e., within the middle ear). However, for most health care practitioners, including pediatricians, a diagnosis of AOM is typically based on a plurality of non-surgical symptoms. These symptoms may include earache, fever and reddening and/or bulging of the tympanic membrane within the ear canal. The use of a conventional otoscope to evaluate an outer surface of the tympanic membrane may not provide a conclusive determination of AOM because its symptoms frequently overlap with many other conditions of the ear that do not require antibiotic-based treatment. For example, an outward bulging of the tympanic membrane caused by the presence of fluid in the middle ear may result in reduced membrane mobility that suggests AOM. However, such bulging may actually be caused by otitis media with effusion (OME), which typically does not require any antibiotic-based treatment. Likewise, a reddening and thickening of the tympanic membrane with a loss of normal topology may suggest either AOM, OME or a common cold virus.
One system that purports to facilitate detection if AOM or OME in patients is disclosed in US Application Serial No. 2007/0112273 to Rogers, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. This system includes an optical measuring unit and a control unit. The optical measuring unit is configured to irradiate a tympanic membrane of a patient with incident light having at least two different wavelengths and produce measurement data therefrom. The at least two different wavelengths are purportedly selected such that the response of the tympanic membrane from the first wavelength light is substantially independent of a predetermined condition to be detected, but the response from the second wavelength light is affected by the predetermined condition. Another system for measuring physical properties of tympanic membranes using reflected light is also disclosed in US Application Serial No. 2006/0282009 to Oberg et al., the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference.